Pollies, please note

We wonder if any politicians, especially those on a break from federal Parliament next week, will take the time to be in Melbourne on Wednesday night for a free public lecture given by philosopher and award-winning author professor Raimond Gaita.

In a well-timed move, Gaita – famous for his book Romulus, My Father, which was later made into a film starring
Eric Bana
– is giving a lecture looking at dignity in politics (does it even exist, we wonder?)

“The aim of the series will be to press the need for us to reclaim the dignity of politics through reclaiming the language to express the dignity of citizenship because, I believe, the former depends on the latter," Gaita says in a missive sent around on Friday.

The good professor reckons there has been a “decline of a serious sense of politics as a unique kind of public engagement".

Little surprise, really, given how the folks in Parliament in Canberra have been acting of late.